This Sunday we have
the first of two Gospel Doctrine lessons centering on Joseph, the son of Jacob who was sold into Egypt. It's the perfect time for the latest installment of "Watch With Jeff!"
I first saw the 1999 movie version of
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 2001, in my final mission area in Scotland. Sister Rattray was a sweet but quirky old woman who had the missionaries over for breakfast every Saturday morning. It would upset her if we ever skipped a week, but she also never spent any time with us--after placing the food before us, she'd leave to work on her bike or putter around her garden. So to pass the time, my companion and I would often watch something from her collection of church videos. One week, instead of choosing a more inspirational or doctrinally-sound selection, we popped
Dreamcoat into the VCR--and I loved it. We watched it almost every Saturday until I went home a few months later, by which time I had the entire thing memorized.
It's going to be a bit tougher to Watch With Jeff this time; the only full version I can find on YouTube is split into 11 parts, and the audio isn't synced. If you want to watch that way,
here's the link to part 1, and you'll see the later parts in the sidebar. I found the full video on a few other sites, but none that were embed-able. The time stamps below correspond with
this version. If you've never seen this delightful musical before, it's worth the extra effort to check it out, and if you're already familiar with it, my commentary will hopefully enhance your experience. Let's watch!
0:32: I wonder how many of these kids wound up being extras in the Harry Potter movies? I think I see more than a few Hufflepuffs in this crowd.
3:06: By the time I left Scotland, I had a pretty big crush on Maria Friedman, who plays the narrator. It was probably due to a combination of her sassy personality, her blazer (which has a "Tina Fey's glasses" sort of appeal), and the teensy bit of exposed midriff, which conveyed a certain forbidden-to-a-missionary allure.
4:45: A decade ago, I was working as a production assistant on Marie Osmond's radio show. My youngest sister had a huge crush on Donny, and I asked Marie if she could get me an autographed picture of him to give to my sister on her birthday. She said she'd try, but what I ended up with a few weeks later was a signed photo of Marie, on which she had written, "Just picture Donny in drag." Which is basically what you get at times in Dreamcoat with Donny's long hair, eye makeup, and some of his costumes.
7:53: Ah, Sir Richard Attenborough. The ultimate Hollywood grandfather figure has played the father of the tribes of Israel, the father of velociraptors, and the father of Christmas.
11:50: "His astounding clothing took the biscuit." I loved this line, because our breakfast at Sister Rattray's often included biscuits for us to take, and sometimes they were Penguin Biscuits. Not only were they tasty, but they too were named after a creature with elaborate "clothing." Best of all, the wrappers
had jokes on them!
15:10: The interactions between the narrator and the brothers are an underrated highlight of the movie. Good casting.
17:15: This song, this sequence, is the funniest of the movie, and probably my favorite part. The two best bits--the way the brothers shout "You hairy bunch of Ishmeelites," and...
17:58: ...when they headbutt the goat and tear its limbs off! We've already seen sheep and camels "walking" around, and they're hilarious too, but I love this part with the goat so much.
21:41: I'm a little unclear on the relationship of these women to the Israelites. Here, they mostly seem like they're the wives of the other brothers, but an earlier song mentioned how Jacob's "sons and his wives used to call him 'Dad.'" The relationship will become even murkier later in the movie.
24:48: I think, back then, most people referred to Potiphar as "the Egyptian Babe Ruth." #Pinstripes
25:55: I enjoy how the movie subtly, repeatedly encourages its viewers to study the Old Testament. Using Genesis 39 in a rhyme reminds me of the mnemonic devices we learned in seminary to help us remember the "scripture mastery" verses. It was "She's not mine, Genesis 39" for the verse in which Joseph says "How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" (v. 9). Study your scriptures!
27:23: Scandalous! Joan Collins was a great choice for Mrs. Potiphar. Kudos again on the casting. The former
Dynasty star had a bit of a career revival at the turn of the century (at least as far as it involved stuff that I'm interested in), appearing in this movie in '99, and in 2000 having her trashy persona lampooned on a great
Simpsons episode (which helped earn her this
Urban Dictionary entry).
29:23: Donny's too nice and goofy (see Weird Al's
"White and Nerdy" video) to successfully pull off this serious song. His son Brandon was in my ward in Provo, and once Donny showed up at Brandon's place to drop off--unsolicited--a life-size poster of him as Gaston (from his other big Broadway role in
Beauty and the Beast), which Brandon and his roommates displayed in their front room for a few months. Donny doesn't do serious.
34:26: Joseph wins at the end--the narrator knows because she's "read the book." Have you? I highly recommend it!
35:35: This baker really reminds me of Georgie Porgie from a
previous installment of "Watch With Jeff."
36:51: I'm a big fan of the made-up word "buttle."
39:55: Confession time: I've never seen a stage production of Dreamcoat. So I don't know how the movie version differs. But I like the conceit employed here, of a school play where the students are not only watching but participating, and all of the main actors are teachers or administrators at the school. Except Joseph--the first time we see Donny, he's already in costume. Is he the school janitor? Some random vagrant who just showed up and started singing crazy songs, and they built a show around him?
41:59: My companion used to like to sing this line as "could be famous; could be a physicist." He knew the real words, but the new version is funnier.
45:00: This Pharaoh doesn't really do it for me. I have an audio cassette of the soundtrack, a recording of Donny with a different traveling Dreamcoat company, and that Pharaoh does a more direct Elvis impersonation, which seems appropriate for the character and the constant allusions to him as the King.
47:43: Joseph consults the scriptures to find out what he should do. So relevant to real life!
51:40: The narrator sings that "Egypt did not mind [Joseph's economic policies] a bit," but I wonder. This is getting more into the chapters covered in next week's lesson, but Joseph and Pharaoh gathered all the grain into central storehouses, then forced their subjects to give them their money, their cattle, their lands, and eventually themselves as slaves to buy their own corn back. If only his brothers, who once sang that "the things that [Joseph] stood for--like democracy!--never die," could see him now. (Spoiler alert: they will.)
55:58-57:40: Again, ambiguous roles for the Israelite women. The brothers seem really into this dancer, but so does Jacob. Whose wife is she? She can't be just some random harlot, she's been living and dancing with them since Joseph's "death" at least.
58:54: The sheep skeletons! You know how people on the Internet see something cute or funny or awesome and they say, "I can't even?" I find that trend particularly annoying, but if I didn't, I would totally say, "The sheep skeletons! I can't even."
64:28: Benjamin was basically the Justin Bieber of the Land of Canaan. Turn your life around before it's too late, Ben!
70:42: If you're wondering why they couldn't spring for real or even animatronic sheep/camels/etc., it's probably because they blew the entire props budget on Joseph's chariot. Look at that thing! It's so ostentatious, it apparently gave Jacob a heart attack.
75:23: Oh, I guess Donny is a teacher or something. All those cute kids are safe! Probably.
77:00: They all get identified at the beginning, but it's tough to keep most of the brothers straight throughout the movie. I'm not sure how they decided what Asher's personality should be like, but the faces he makes while dancing and the way he uses his girth to get laughs are brilliant. Well done, Martin Callaghan!
That's it! Thanks for watching. Now go read the Bible!
